Birch Trees in Winter

This idea came from The beginning pages of the book Snowballs by Louis Elhert. This is a simple collage using strips of white paper, black tempera paint and white paper that was hole punched.I did this as a project with the after school program kids.

So many snowman so little time

 So I have not always been the biggest snow man fan. I know some people are all about the little guys but in the past  I was not as affected by the snowman craze. This year I have been bitten by a snowman bug it seems.

 I have been making a lot of snowman projects. I have created snowman earrings with polymer clay and  we be making many different snowman projects with the students in the after school program.

In the classroom while subbing I have also carried over this snowman craze of mine.

In the classroom student have been painting simple white outlines on blue construction paper to make snowman collages with.  They paint the snowman first then later glue on the button and precut construction paper hats and noses and foil paper scarfs.

We  have also been making snowman collages with students and using a template I found on Big Activities.Their is even a great step by step with visuals directions page you can print out.

The results vary and although the worksheets are identical students have unique perspectives on how their finished snow person will look.

So when you are teaching projects on snowmen you have to have some snowman earrings. These are easy to make but if you would like a pair to wear without the time it takes to make them you can order a custom made pair on my sculptresslink etsy shop.

I even made a snowman math activity for the after school program.
this is from an old curriculum guide I had. To do this first make copies of the snowmen,then cut them out color them in and write math problems on their bellies then glue sticks to them and write the answers on the bottom of the sticks. Then decorate a shallow box and put holes in the top to hold the sticks and the box will conceal the answers,

Winter scenes at night

This is a drawing project I did with my after school program students.  I gave them black construction paper and white colored pencils. I showed them how to draw the snow hill,a pine tree and a snowman what they did with that was up to them.  We added some color with crayons for snowman details and color and the trees.

Snowmen Castrophe

My challenge, teach a cartooning lesson that does not use people or animals.
 .I went through my comic book collection I have mostly people,superheroes and personified animals in there.I looked through my old examples of comic strips that I had made--all about my dog.."No,those are not  not going to work" I said.

I spent some time on several web pages  looking up cartoon tutorials. I found one on drawing a cartoon snowman..No tutorial really needed just three circles but I did like the cartoon eyes. This would work and gave me tons of great ideas.Snowmen could have facial expressions.They could have conversations and if personified they would also have problems,conflicts and issues just like other cartoon characters.

I tried this first  with the morning program kids. The students were  kindergarten, fourth and fifth grades.

They  had some great ideas of what could happen that would be bad for a snowman. I thouhght of limbs falling off mine other thins kids thought of were "They could melt". "A dog could pee on them","Someone could throw hot water on them."

I tried this again later the same day with another group of students. I showed them my examples and walked them through a few morecompostional  drawing tips then the morning crew had. This was the class I had prepred it for.The morning group I was using it as a timefiller . I talked to them about snowmen not being perfectly round and that they could be other shapes,I mentioned that they could be female instead of male. I got questions about this..  I clarified with "Keep it appropriate. I do not need to see snow people genitals. The clothing is descriptive enough."



 I was working along with another artist teacher this class and she is partial to using washable markers and brushing into them with water for a watercolor effect.  I worked very successfully for this project. It allowed you to get the bold markers colors were you wanted bold but to also get nice color washes in areas for snow or sky were you want some transparency.The students had great success with them and created snow people that wore tie dye, had huge hats being attacked by cats, triangular snow people, cubed snow people etc.

I really enjoyed these and honestly want to do a whole series with the three cartoon snow persons I created.